That was enough to tell Baru that Shao Lune had been alone with her ambition for most of her life. Feeling an uncomfortable kinship, Baru had begun to tease the prisoner. The prisoner had retaliated, viciously, with aspersions on Baru’s intelligence, integrity, and acuity. Baru had liked it so much she got some more rum for Shao Lune. By this point she was so drunk she could perceive Shao’s emotions with absolute clarity. It was all so obvious! Why couldn’t she understand people so confidently when sober?

Shao wasn’t cruel or smug. She was fucking terrified. She’d been dragged into Ormsment’s mutiny, she’d gambled everything on a second mutiny to get back on the winning side, and now she was a captive resource in the internal politics of the Throne.

They began to trade ribald stories. Their first, and their best: the same, for Baru. Shao showed no surprise at Baru’s taste for women. She was, if not a proper tribadist, at least unconventional in her desires, and differently than Ulyu Xe and Iraji. Her stories depended not on the beauty or status of her lovers, but on how fraught and dangerous their courtship, and on how ably Shao had manipulated the situation. Privately Baru suspected Shao was a narcissist with a taste for the illegal. She delighted in playing the perfectly reserved and composed Falcrest woman by day—did she, Baru wondered aloud, ever need to lower her guard?

Not lower it, Shao said, with rum-fueled humor. One did not lower a fortress’s walls. One opened a gate and send out a raiding party to obtain what one required.

What did Shao Lune require, then?

She required Baru to come closer.

That would be quite unwise. Shao Lune was a prisoner, and Baru had standards.

But the prisoner had already hooked Baru’s ankle in a loop of chain. Baru ought to defend herself, oughtn’t she? Defend yourself, Baru.

Baru thought she was much too drunk for that.

Was she afraid? Was she a coward?

No. She was braver than Lune could possibly know.

She ought to prove it, then. She should say something brave.

Come over here and fuck me, then.

Then Baru was pinned beneath her on the hardwood, cold chains slithering over her skin, Shao Lune’s teeth in her lower lip. A long vague interregnum of foreplay. Shao’s attentions wrapped Baru in chains and stretched her taut across the platform. Was she afraid, Shao Lune wondered? Didn’t she think Shao Lune might drown her in the bilge?

Baru had answered with husky honesty. I’d deserve to drown. I would be glad to rest.

(Had she said that? Fool.)